Hi, Cicada!
Thanks so much for doing the interview. I heard—and was delightfully terrified by—your productions on Signalis. Let’s start at the beginning: What got you into creating music, and what’s been your creative journey over the years?
I’d always messed around with guitar and some other instruments since I was a kid. But I didn’t actually start making music of my own until the pandemic. I had rented this tiny 300 sq. foot “apartment” that had no windows and basically shut myself up in there from the beginning of the pandemic until the vaccine came out. I think that was like a year with no real human contact. Needless to say, it was hell on my mental health. So I started writing these songs and putting them up on SoundCloud.
Did you always specialize in avant-garde, intense productions?
Yeah, I’ve always been a fan of early electronic and experimental music. I’m a huge fan of Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, Laurie Spiegel, and a bunch of others. There’s something about those ’60s and ’70s-era recordings that feel unsettling, in a good way.
How did you connect with Rose Engine to do soundtrack work for Signalis?
I wrote all of my tracks in the Signalis OST before they reached out to me. I had written these tracks and put them up on SoundCloud, and they reached out to me about using them for some of the OST.
What was your favorite track(s) to produce for the game?
I think “Safe Room” was my favorite. Chronologically, it was the 4th track I’d ever written, and it’s the one where I feel like I really started to sound like myself.
While the cancerous Replicas were spooky, it’s your productions that began to play as they chased me that made the game terrifying! Not really a question, but I think your work added greatly to the atmosphere and terror I experienced during my playthrough. Thank you? 🙂
Thanks, haha.
I noticed that your productions often juxtapose loud percussion against ambient backdrops, giving them a tribal, haunted feeling. What is it about mixing those sound extremes that’s appealing to you?
I love things that are at odds with themselves. Finding a way to add contrasting moods of things always appeals to me. I love when something is scary and beautiful at the same time. Or ambient but also loud and abrasive. I like movies that do that too. A good example would be Hangover Square (1945). It’s a horror about this composer with serious mental health problems who blacks out and kills people. It’s horror, but it’s also very tragic, and you feel bad for the guy. I love the emotional conflict of it.
I enjoyed your latest record, Harsh Wires! The ambient pieces are delicately distorted with brief, vivid rushes of sound that occasionally interject and add a harshness and volatility to the record. I felt heartbroken and abandoned in a desolate space, although the final track, “No Eye Contact,” left me feeling a slight tinge of hope that I’d eventually find my way home. Films elicit such diverse responses from their viewers, and I think soundtracks are integral in wrangling audiences’ emotions to feel similarly at key moments in the plot. What emotions are you interested in evoking from your audience?
With Harsh Wires, it was kind of a way to get out some feelings of anger and depression that I feel about everything right now. The ongoing Palestinian genocide, America’s treatment of immigrants, people of color, trans folks. Our normalization of violence and apathy as a culture. The industrialization of human misery. I think making this kind of music is the only way I can deal with how I feel now.
Generic question alert! What are your favorite soundtracks? Is there a style of music that you feel most drawn to?
I always love those older late ’70s and ’80s synth-driven soundtracks. Like the OST to Sorcerer or Thief by Tangerine Dream. Or Blade Runner by Vangelis. I also love the soundtrack work that John Carpenter did. His soundtrack to The Fog was really influential to me.
Also, weirder stuff like the more sound design–focused work on Eraserhead. There’s also an ’80s Japanese movie called To Sleep So As To Dream. It’s got some fun, quirky songs on there, but throughout the movie there are also these really experimental ambient pieces. It’s a beautiful film.
If you could soundtrack any film—real or fictional—what would it be?
I would love to do a soundtrack to this ’80s German film called Decoder. I think there’s a lot of emotional depth that could be captured in it by doing an alternate soundtrack. Not knocking the original OST, of course.
I lived in Tennessee for several years and grew up around the Maryville region. How do you think Tennessee has influenced your sound?
Oh yeah, absolutely! If you go out in the woods here at night, there are so many cicadas, frogs, katydids, and God knows what else making a load of noise. It pulses in and out in these hypnotic waves. It’s very eerie out there. “Near Dark by the Pond” from the Signalis OST and also “Ribeiroia” from my album Flicker Vertigo are very inspired by these sounds.
I was reminded of Silent Hill 2’s iconic soundtrack while playing Signalis. Who are your biggest influences—i.e., musicians, artists, or otherwise?
Oh yeah, I was very inspired by Silent Hill’s music. I think most horror game composers owe Akira Yamaoka a lot of credit. Other influences, aside from what I mentioned earlier, are Tim Hecker and Ryuichi Sakamoto. I don’t really sound like either of them, but their style and the way they structure things really opened up a lot of ideas for me. Also, Scott Walker’s album Tilt was really huge for me. It’s beautiful and unsettling. I love the loud bursts of abrasive industrial sounds and the melodramatic orchestral stings on it. It’s just one of my favorite albums.
What’s next for Cicada Sirens? Any further aspirations for releasing soundtracks or personal projects?
I’m working on a couple of new things right now. There are a few games that are going to take a couple of years to be released. I can’t really say much there. I’m also working on a lo-fi PS1 graphics–style animation called Revenant. We should be releasing some tracks from that here and there as the project goes on.
I want to keep working in games or, hopefully someday, do some indie horror films. But until then, I’d like to just keep making new music and exploring what “Cicada Sirens” is as a person/project.
Thank you for your time!